


Providence

by bbl8te



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ben Solo hates sand, Bendemption, Church of the Force, Dual POV, F/M, Force Dyad (Star Wars), Forced Proximity, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Jakku, Mild mention of blood, Millenium Falcon, No Pregnancy, Pre-TFA, Slow Burn, The Force Ships It, The ending will be happy but it will hurt a little before we get there, Touch-Starved, Unresolved Sexual Tension, it gets in his pretty hair, reylo prompts, the author likes long pining stares and she hopes you do too, there will be smut prepare yourselves accordingly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:34:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23104051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbl8te/pseuds/bbl8te
Summary: He’d show her fields of wildflowers and vermilion jungles and waters so clear she could see straight to the bottom. They’d work as freighters, or smugglers, or travel the galaxy as freeloading vagabonds if that was what it took. He’d raze down solar systems and lay their asteroids at her feet if she asked it of him.He doesn’t think there’s anything he wouldn’t do for her, for this, forthem.———Pre-TFA, Kylo Ren crash lands in the graveyard of ships on Jakku. Rey rescues him and offers him shelter until he’s well enough to leave. The more they learn about one another and mysterious power connecting them, the harder it is for them to stay apart.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 189
Kudos: 332
Collections: Reylo Prompt Fills (@reylo_prompts)





	1. Landing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey finds a mysterious stranger in the graveyard of ships and nurses him back to health.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! This little fic is inspired by [this prompt](https://twitter.com/reylo_prompts/status/1235394350135181313?s=21) which I simply couldn’t get out of my head. 
> 
> Gorgeous moodboard made by [ Cody](https://bb-8.tumblr.com/)! I love it so much I can’t stop staring at it ;-;
> 
> Here's the [spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0BtuaSmQMsRg6Z9btlXVVV?si=snK2irveTK6LyKsZHzdDzA).  
> Enjoy the story!

***

Rey feels the impact before she hears it.

The air inside the AT-AT hums to life, forcing her to abandon the project on her worktable. She stills immediately, her very cells responding to the tension in the atmosphere. The objects on her shelves begin to rattle. The tools on her table shake so violently that some of them go leaping to the ground. It’s early in the morning —the sun hasn’t even risen—and she wonders if it’s just another trader, struggling to fly a damaged ship he’s been sold by Unkar Plutt.

Then she hears it. The unmistakable sound of space craft whizzing through the air too fast and too close to promise a safe landing.

She reaches for her staff and runs outside.

***

He isn’t Ben Solo anymore. He hasn’t been in a long time. But when Kylo finds himself making these kinds of stupid, ridiculous, _avoidable_ mistakes, he hears the incessant commentary of Leia Organa on endless loop inside his head.

_Think clearly. Don’t be so hot-headed. Take a deep breath. Find balance._

_Don’t be so much like your father._

Kylo wishes he could kill those voices, even though he knows they’re right. His impulsiveness has gotten him into this mess. The creature that sold him this ship had convinced him tirelessly that it was unmarked and untraceable. He could disappear to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, or hide in plain sight. No matter what he needed, the ship would provide.

He grits his teeth, remembering the laughing eyes in that big, mottled face. He'd _known_ something was off about the entire transaction, as they often were on the black market. Pressed for time and in his rush to his leave, he had taken the gamble.

It hadn't ended in his favor.

He’d aimed for the closest planet—or whatever this barren fucking wasteland claimed to be. Jakku he knows only in name, from the history texts and Luke’s unending lectures on the war. As of yet, he hasn’t passed over a single sign of civilization. There is nothing but sand for miles and he thinks, at least, he will have a soft landing.

He feels oddly calm, despite it all. Or perhaps _because_ of it all. There is precious little he can do to stop this. When he had pressed the button to eject, _nothing_ had happened, not even so much as a creak of the mechanics.

Kylo musters what strength in the Force he can to delay the inevitable. He reaches out, compels the craft to bend to his will and _slow_. He doesn’t know if it makes a difference. He crashes down once, the view outside a whirlwind of sand. The craft hurtles through the air again, and then there is a glimpse of dark sky until he touches down onto the ground. The process repeats so many times over again that he loses count and his head begins to swim.

Mercifully, he loses consciousness.

***

His first thought upon waking is how _hot_ it is. He is practically suffocating, which tells him that the ship must be in complete ruins if it’s not even regulating its own temperature.

He’s been hanging upside down for who knows how long, and the blood has rushed to his head with pounding severity. His hair is plastered to his forehead and neck in a wet, sticky mess. He wants to rip his clothes off, but his arms are hanging down uselessly below him and he can’t quite get them to work.

He has to get out of here. He has to get air.

He reaches out to the Force, wills it to bring strength back to his limbs. He tears his mask off and it falls with a thud. Then, he succeeds in propelling himself from his seat, only to crash pitifully onto the floor.

The bones in his right arm snap with a resounding _crack_.

His vision whites out from the pain. He has to blink over and over again, focus, try to remember what he needs to do. Blindly, he kicks around for the button that opens the front hatch. It creaks open and he is met with a face full of sand.

***

After an hour’s travel, Rey finally reaches the source. Twilight has come, and the sun rises slowly in the distant horizon. It paints the sky with pinks and purples, casting growing light on the wreckage before her. She circles the site warily, unsure of who or what she’ll find. Her urge to help battles fiercely with her sense of self-preservation.

Rey knows all kinds of spaceships, has studied them from the inside out from the moment she touched down on Jakku. Perhaps if this one wasn’t buried within a sand dune, she could figure out where it’s pilot came from. All she can see is the tip of a single, silver wing. She thinks the sand has likely snuffed out any kind of fire or explosion and that, at least, is a good sign.

Unless the pilot is still inside.

“They’re probably dead,” she says aloud to herself, because spending so much time alone will do that to a person. “There’s no way they survived that impact.”

And yet, she drifts closer. There’s that hum in the air again, that steady, insistent pulse. She thought it had just been the vibration of the craft breaking atmosphere, but now that she feels it again, she isn’t so sure.

She drifts closer. Slowly, carefully...

Then, she sees him.

A human male, she assumes, based on his size. He is stumbling miles away from the wreck. He’s cloaked in black and dragging an injured leg, falling over repeatedly. Eventually, he is reduced to crawling on his hands and knees.

Heading in completely the wrong direction.

He’ll be swallowed up by the sinking sand fields in no time. Rey bites her lip hard, contemplating what to do. He’ll surely die out here if she doesn’t intervene. He could just as well stab her in her sleep after he was well enough to do so.

There were only two kinds of people on Jakku: traders who came and went, and the survivors, like herself, who would eke out a living here by any means necessary. This man had to be the former, and an inexperienced one at that. It simply wasn’t possible that any person knowledgeable of the climate would walk around dressed in black and a heavy cloak. It was an invitation to heatstroke, at the very least.

As if on cue, the man stops moving.

“Shit,” Rey mumbles. She revs up her speeder and rushes towards him.

***

He is being crushed to death. The pressure on his chest is so intense that he wonders if he’s pinned under the ship, slowly being buried further and further into the sand. He flails an arm out and it flops uselessly back down.

“Hold on,” a voice tells him. “You’re injured, and I think you have heatstroke. I have to get some of these layers off… why are you _wearing so many?_ ”

It’s a woman’s voice, he registers. She has crisp, lilting accent that juxtaposes with her rough hands. Those hands are on his skin, now, and they feel cool against his boiling forehead. He thinks they’re farmer’s hands, or mechanic’s. Whatever she does, they’re hands used to manual labor. Maybe if he asks nicely, she’ll strangle him to death with them.

She struggles with his cloak, then opens his jacket. She can’t get his shirt off, so she settles with bunching it up and dropping a cold compress on his stomach. He flinches at it, then relaxes, and she places more on his forehead and neck. She rolls up the sleeve of his left arm, but hesitates when she gets to the right.

“You arm is broken.”

 _Ah,_ he thinks, _So that was where that blinding pain was coming from._

“Just hold on.”

She leaves him and he fades in and out of consciousness, drowning in visions of blistering heat and sun and air drier than he’s ever known. He doesn’t know how much time has elapsed since the girl left. Minutes? Hours? Water is poured over his face. He chokes and gurgles, then opens his mouth to drink the rest as it comes. His eyes open. His would-be savior comes into focus.

She’s covered from head to toe in drab desert garb, complete with face coverings and an ugly pair of goggles. When she realizes he’s conscious, she removes them and pulls down her scarf, revealing her face to him. _She’s young_ , is his first thought. She has a soft and open expression, a bronzed glow, a smattering of freckles, flushed cheeks. She’s the sun incarnate, buried under poverty and dirty scavenger rags.

Her eyes—hazel, green, both?— are peering down at him with nothing but guileless concern. He wonders, delusionally, how long it’s been since someone looked at him that way.

“Welcome back,” she tells him. She is a stranger to him, but her voice already seems so familiar.

He opens his mouth to respond but his throat is still so dry. He can feel bits of sand caught in his teeth.

“That’s okay. It’s better if you don’t talk, you’re pretty hurt.” She looks over her shoulder, then back at him. “I brought you to my... home. Hope that’s okay. We were too far north from the outpost and I don’t think you would have made the trip in the state you’re in.”

He blinks. Her home? He doesn’t remember anything past crawling from the wreckage and being stripped of his clothes.

He turns his head to the side and spies her transport speeder, engine still on and humming. Did she lift him onto that?

“Do you have any friends or family? Anyone I can get for you?”

He wishes he could laugh. Instead, he shakes his head slowly to one side, then the other.

“Right, okay… I’m going to get you settled here, and then I’ll head to the Outpost. I’ll see if I can find a tribal healer. They’re expensive, but—“

His arm flies up and she jerks away from him. It flops to the ground between them.

“No,” he croaks, squeezing his eyes shut.

“No?”

“Healer,” he says. “Don’t need it.”

She makes a face at him. “You’re hurt. I can try and patch you up the best I can, but…” she trails off, looking at his broken arm.

Kylo shakes his head again. He opens his eyes and bores his gaze into her. He wills the thought into her head too.

_No healer._

She shudders visibly, as though this isn’t the most sweltering heat Kylo’s ever experienced.

“Fine. Let’s get you inside. Can you move at all? Or should I keep dragging you?”

With a grunt, Kylo rolls onto his side. Breathing heavily, he braces himself up on his good arm and gets to his knees, but the effort makes him dizzy in a short time.

“I’ve got you.” The girl slips under his arm and with a grunt, supports him to his feet. She’s stronger than she looks, and sturdier, too. If Kylo is heavy, she doesn’t show it. She half-carries him, step by painful step, into the place she calls home.

***

Rey loses an entire day’s scavenge while tending to her new patient, and her stomach growls fiercely to prove it. She’s used to hunger, has lived it with it for so long that it doesn’t even phase her most of the time. 

Regardless, it’s a reminder that if she doesn’t have enough food for herself, she definitely doesn’t have enough to feed a man as large as this one. She’d nearly thrown out her back helping him inside the AT-AT, and she was used to hauling damaged goods around.

At the very least, nighttime has brought with it cool relief from the sun. The man has barely maintained consciousness, but the flush in his complexion has gone down and his breathing is steady. She thinks that, at least, is a good sign. She applied bandages where she could and splinted his arm, but if he doesn't receive medical attention soon she knows the bones won’t set properly.

Rey wanders closer to him again. She’s made a habit out of studying his face while he sleeps, which he has been doing a lot of. She tells herself she is checking for injury, but in reality, she is _fascinated_ by him.

She has rarely ever seen a sleeping person up close before and this man is _handsome_. Jakku didn’t have people like him, with pale skin, full lips, and thick hair. He looks like someone out of a legend, big and important, destined for great things. What he was doing in the graveyard of ships, Rey couldn’t begin to guess. She reaches for a tin of salve, scoops some out, and applies it to his sunburnt cheeks. His breath hitches a little at the gentle contact.

“I’m good at fixing things,” she tells him. “But if you’re in trouble, I don’t think there’s much I can do to help you.”

His brow furrows, then relaxes. For his own sake, Rey hopes he sleeps through the night. When she gets up to leave, a large hand clamps down on her wrist.

She bites back a gasp and freezes.

“What are you?” His voice is so dry and cracked that it’s almost painful to hear it.

“Don’t you mean who?” she replies, indignantly.

“No. _What_.”

She shifts closer, so her arm isn’t pulled so taught in his grip. Despite his condition, he is still strong. His dark eyes bore into her own, making her feel as though he is seeing something that she can't.

“Human?” she tries.

He shakes his head. “There’s something else. You’re…” he trails off, his fingers loosening.

Rey heaves a sigh. “You’re tired, and injured, and dehydrated. You need to rest, not ask me questions that I can’t answer.”

He doesn’t respond. She places his hand back on the bed and draws the sheet over him.

Rey retreats to her hammock and readies herself for sleep. Then she lies there, eyes wide in the darkness, trying to quell the electric current that ignited in her skin when he touched her.


	2. Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey struggles with Ben’s mood. Kylo struggles with being Ben.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I upped the chapter count in an effort not to make each one so long. Let me know if you’re enjoying the story so far!

He's being buried alive. Each time he lifts his head, more sand rushes into his mouth. He hacks and spits it out and screams and screams, like he’s still a child, like Han Solo will come barreling down the corner at any second, blaster raised…

He does. _He does._ There he is, his father, young and handsome and aiming the blaster high, aiming it... at Ben’s own heart.

He lurches upwards with a howl caught in his throat.

“STOP!”

Hands fly to his shoulders in an effort to push him down and he fights them off, crazed and wounded and looking for escape. He reaches out to use the Force.

The weapon swung inches from his throat finally stills him. He breathes rapidly and his abdomen aches with the effort. His mind crashes back to reality, back to the metal box the girl calls home. It’s dark, save for the glow of a small lamp on a table nearby.

He looks up at her.

She has a staff aimed at him and seems more than prepared to subdue him if she has to. Her voice is firmer than he’s ever heard from her.

“ _Don’t_ move,” she orders.

He could laugh. At her or at himself, he doesn’t know. When was the last time anyone told him what to do?

Besides Snoke…

“You’re hurt,” she stresses. Her face is half-shadowed, but her eyes are bright in the darkness. “I was changing your bandage. I didn’t think you’d wake up. Now, are you going to attack me again, or can I finish up?”

He eyes her warily, but nods. Her shoulders relax. In one fluid, practiced motion, she returns the staff to its resting place by the door.

She comes towards him then and he notices that her hair is loose, let down from the three-bun hairstyle she’d had during the day. It softens her features, makes her look even younger.

“Where are you from?” she asks him over her shoulder. She gathers medical supplies and drags a metal stool towards him.

“Far from here,” he rasps.

She raises a brow as she sits beside him. “Well, alright.”

Her head is bowed as she prepares what she needs, and Kylo takes a moment to study her face. He notices the dark circles under her eyes, the grim stretch of her lips. How long has it been since she found him in the desert? How long since she’d been caring for him? The evidence of her exhaustion wants to pull at something long-buried inside him, but he reminds himself that he didn’t ask for her help. If he was a burden to her, it was of her own doing. He had no reason to pity her.

The girl’s gaze flashes back to his and he wonders, wildly, if she has read his mind. There is something simultaneously too young and too old about the look she gives him, as though she can see something in him that he can’t see himself.

It’s unnerving. He forgets himself—is staring too intensely at her—because she breaks eye contact first and busies herself with her supplies. Color crests her cheeks.

“How old are you?” he finds himself asking, unprompted.

“Nineteen, probably.”

“Probably?”

She gives him a withering look. “Turn your head away from me, I need to see that cut.”

He does so, stiffening when her fingers part his sticky hair. He didn’t even realize he’d injured his head. He also didn’t think she’d be sitting so close.

“You live alone?“ he asks then, because apparently he’s deeply invested in the plights of Jakku scavengers.

She hesitates before admitting, “I do. You know, for someone who says so little about himself, you ask a _lot_ of questions.

That silences him. The seconds tick past as she applies something to his wound. He doesn’t miss her sharp intake of breath as she gauges its severity.

“You bled a lot,” she tells him, breath ghosting over his exposed ear. “But it looks like it mostly stopped. I suppose you’ll survive after all. I can’t do anything about that arm, though.” She applies a fresh bandage, wrapping gauze around his head to maintain pressure on the wound.

Such primitive medical tools. He looks down at his right arm, splinted and held in a rudimentary sling.

“It won’t set properly like that. You’ll have to get it looked at.”

“I’m fine.”

She heaves a long-suffering sigh. “Whatever suits you, I suppose. Honestly, I don’t know how you’re even awake right now. You must be in a lot of pain.”

Kylo does a mental once over and yes, there is pain in nearly every limb of his body. But he’s used to it. Thrives in it. It’s the only thing that’s bringing him comfort in this precarious situation.

The girl rises, putting a blessed distance between them. He hates the vulnerability of this situation. He is dependent on this girl, whether he likes it or not.

“How do you feel?” she asks, putting away her supplies.

He decides on honesty. “Like shit.”

The comment startles a laugh out of her. “Well, you’ll be pleased to know you look like it, too.”

He scowls at her turned back. “Why would that please me?”

“Because it means I’ll continue to take pity on you. Even if you are a massive jerk.”

He bristles at her words, her tone, her holier-than-thou demeanor. Who did this dirty scavenger think she was speaking to?

 _No one,_ his inner dialogue supplies. _You’re actually no one. She doesn’t know anything about you._

Kylo contemplates using mind manipulation on her. He could make her find the closest ship for him, strap him into it, and then forget any of this had ever happened. Or he could knock her unconscious, throw her in a slumber so deep that she’d only remember him as a vague and distant dream.

“My name is Rey, by the way,” she says abruptly. She has her staff in hand again. “In case it didn’t occur to you to ask.”

It hadn’t.

“I have to get some sleep. Can I trust that you’re not going to kill me?”

He gestures down at himself. “I’m not in the condition to murder a slug, much less you.”

Rey doesn’t look as though she believes him. “Well, in any case, stay in bed. But if you have to relieve yourself, I suggest you do it at least five miles down wind. And do it quickly, the sand mites like to chase liquids to their source.”

She seems to take pleasure in his tense expression. He decides that he hates her.

“What should I call you?” she asks. There is a makeshift hammock hanging in a corner of the room. He watches as she slips off her boots, props her staff next to it, and climbs in. She swings in the whimsical set-up with childlike freedom.

She asked him a question. _Right._

He scrambles for a response, then shakes his head. It hardly seems as though the environment to announce himself as Kylo Ren, pivotal figure in The First Order. There was no way to gauge where her sympathies lied and something about her tells him that he should tread carefully, lest he be thrown out to the vultures.

“No name?” Her brows rise up into her hairline. “You must have done something really awful. What is it, then? Smuggling? Thieving?”

His jaw clenches and unclenches. How easy it would be to simply reach out with the Force and snap her neck.

“Do you always talk this much?” he says instead.

“No,” she replies, wrapping a worn, threadbare sheet around herself. “You’re just the first unlucky person who has been forced to listen to me this long.” She waves him off. “Keep your secrets. But if you don’t give me a name I’m going to be forced to make one up on my own, and I can’t promise it’ll be flattering.”

She is completely insufferable.

He could give her a fake name. Really, it wouldn’t have mattered, one way or the other. But those hazel eyes are unflinching and unafraid of him, and something tells him that anything short of the truth will only make her more distrusting of him.

If he wants any hope of surviving the next few days in relative peace, he needs her to trust him.

The word feels sour in his mouth, and it catches in his throat. “Ben,” he tells her, voice breaking. He clears his throat. “Just call me Ben.”

Her expression softens, just a little, and it stirs something foreboding in the pit of his stomach.

“Goodnight, Ben.”

She turns off the lamp and shrouds them in darkness.

***

The morning sun is unwelcome. His pain is exponentially worse: it kept him up for most of the night. It isn’t even fully light outside yet the scavenger girl—Rey—is already up, wandering around the space and packing up tools. She is dressed in the clothes he first saw her in: desert beige, with her hair done up in three neat buns. He watches her slender figure as she works, small hands flying about the equipment as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

She finishes packing, then turns to look at him and jolts. He is already awake, openly watching her, and if he had more decency he’d probably be embarrassed.

“Good morning,” she tells him, face flushing a little.

He says nothing, so she simply sighs heavily and returns to her preparations. “I have to scavenge today. You’re probably starving and I don’t have much in the way of rations. Hopefully I find enough to get us at least through tomorrow.”

Kylo brings himself to a sitting position. His body is stiff and sore from a day in this uncomfortable cot, but he grits his teeth and tries not to show it. If she was heading out to scavenge, it likely meant she’d at some point come across civilization. That meant the opportunity for a ship, and eventual escape from this hellish planet.

“I’ll come with you.”

“No.”

The reply is so sharp that it cuts him. Kylo chokes back the poisonous response that sits just on his tongue.

“I need a ship,” he grits out instead. “If you take me to a town, I can get out of here sooner. You won’t have to play nurse anymore.”

She shakes her head determinedly. “Trust me, I’d be glad to leave you to your secret business. But it isn’t a good idea for you to be out in the heat. Maybe tomorrow we can go, when you’ve eaten and hydrated. We can also see about your arm getting fixed, and about—“

“I’m feeling fine,” he cuts her off.

“Is that so?” Rey puts her hands on her hips and a smile breaks out on her face, wide and beguiling. He’s momentarily caught off-guard by the flash of pretty white teeth.

“Let’s see, then. If you can get up from that bed and walk towards me, I’ll take you with me.”

His face twitches with barely restrained ire. Once again, he fantasizes about bending her mind to his will and putting an end to her unending prattle, her questions, her control over him.

And yet, something about that baiting look on her face makes him unable to ignore the challenge.

Kylo takes exactly two calming breaths and swings his legs out of the cot. Forcing himself not to tremble even a little, he rises in spite of the searing protest of his muscles. There's an achingly long silence as Rey looks him up and down.

“Whenever you’re ready,” she prompts.

He wills his body towards her. One, two, three steps. Pain rackets up his sides and he wills it not to show on his face, not with the scavenger looking up at him with that irritatingly smug smile.

In three more strides he’s directly before her. It’s the first time that they’ve stood face-to-face and if the size difference daunts her, she doesn’t show it. She tilts her head back to meet his stare.

Her wild grin is gone, but there’s still the hint of mischief glittering in her eyes.

“Forget the scavenge,” he tells her. “There are credits on my ship. No doubt they would buy you more than whatever scraps you manage to find out in the desert.”

She considers this, and Kylo recognizes the greed flash across her features. “How much?”

“I don’t know. Enough to get me another ship, if not two.”

She chews on her lip. “Alright,” she concedes at last. “We’ll head to your ship. Give me an hour to make adjustments to my speeder—I’ll have to install a bigger seat, unless you want me to strap you to the hood again.”

He gawks at her and she breaks out in laughter. “I’m kidding. Sort of.” She steps away from him and gestures to the crate beside his cot. “The rest of your clothes are in there, and there are wash packets on the desk.”

And with that, she grabs her staff and goes. The moment she is gone, Kylo collapses against the wall and fights the urge to vomit whatever bile is left in his stomach.

If his injuries don’t kill him, contending with this obstinate scavenger just might do the trick.

***

He needs to take care of his arm. And though he has done this countless times before, he still has to grit his teeth and fight fainting as he uses the Force to twist the bones back into place.

It’s excruciating work, but it’s done. He cleans himself as well as he can and dresses in the same, soiled clothing. He forgoes the jacket and cape, remaining in just his long-sleeved shirt, pants, gloves, and boots. He returns his arm to the makeshift sling and does what he can to try and draw strength from the throbbing pain.

When he finds his lightsaber placed neatly on a separate table, he gapes at it, dumbstruck. He hadn’t even _thought_ to look for it, and that fact alone frightens him more than anything else so far. He clips it to his belt and vows to never remove it.

Prepared as well as he can be, Kylo takes a moment to explore the interior of the scavenger’s home. In the daylight, he catches more details than before. He begins to piece together a picture of the girl’s life.

There’s a table, littered with various machine parts that she appears to have been tinkering with. A potted flower—dried and dead—but providing a small blip of color in an otherwise all-gray interior. It’s a touch of femininity that does something strange to his sense of equilibrium. Under all the scavenger rags and sand and calluses, he’d nearly forgotten that she was still a woman. A woman who’d saved his life.

He won’t dwell on that.

Kylo quashes the itch it provokes in his chest and continues his investigation. He wanders over to her shelves and spies a makeshift doll, wearing what resembles an old Rebel pilot’s uniform. 

_A Resistance sympathizer,_ he notes. He will have to be even more careful with any information he lets slip by her.

His gaze travels to the walls and his entire body freezes.

Hundreds upon hundreds of little scratched lines mark the interior of the dwelling. They cover the space from ceiling to floor, so much so that there is almost no room left.

“Ben?”

Kylo nearly jumps out of his skin. He’s rarely ever been caught off-guard and the unfamiliar feeling makes his stomach churn. First the lightsaber, now this. He’s been too careless of his surroundings. Too trusting of _her._

He turns around to face her and finds that she is smiling, for seemingly no other reason than the fact that he is walking around.

“I’m done with the Speeder. We can head out now.” She gives him another cursory look, up and down, and lingers on his face. “I might have a pair of goggles that fit you. And maybe we can make you a hood out of something-“

“I don’t-“

“You do. Trust me, you do not want sand in your face, or in your hair.”

Rey crosses the room and begins rummaging through a shelf of fabrics and equipment. Before long, he has a pair of goggles as ugly as Rey’s and his hair is tucked into a gray scarf and matching cap. Since his right arm is supposed to still be broken, she has to help him put it all on.

As she tucks the last of his hair into the fabric, her fingers graze his cheek. It’s unintentional—it must be— but the gentleness of it makes him jerk back.

“Sorry,” she says quickly, snatching back her hand as though burned.

He says nothing, but his gaze sears holes in the back of her skull as she leads them outside.


	3. Relic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Ben‘s trip to his crash site doesn’t go quite as planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this chapter finds you all in good health. I have some extra time on my hand (as do most of us) so here’s a faster-than-usual update. Thank you all for the kudos and kind words!

Rey marches towards the Speeder, trying not to dwell on the sheer strangeness of her guest. Ben was ill-mannered at best, and his aversion to touch hadn’t escaped her notice. She almost _felt_ bad whenever she had to change the dressing on his head. She wonders what kind of life Ben must have led before landing in her territory. A lonely one, to be sure. His horrible socialization skills had made as much clear to her. But with him mincing his words so carefully, Rey wasn’t particularly hopeful at learning more about him.

 _Not that I want to,_ she reminds herself harshly. Her goal was to get the man healthy and send him on his way as quickly as possible. He was an inconvenience, a drain on her resources and her patience. She’d be better off when he was gone.

“I did the best I could on short notice,” Rey tells him. She pulls her hood over her head, tucking her buns in with practiced ease as she goes. When she turns to gauge Ben’s reaction to her transport, she finds him staring intently at her hair as it disappears. He blinks away whatever expression he had and looks at her Speeder. 

It was a matter of sheer luck that she’d had the material for a longer seat already at hand. She’d pulled it from a ship not long ago, but had found it too big and unwieldy to serve the purpose of her speeder: to travel long distances, fast and hard. She’s grateful for it now. It would have been impossible for the two of them to sit together in her old seat, Ben being as large as he was and Rey not necessarily wanting to sit on his lap.

Rey hops up first. She swings a leg over the seat and settles in, then pats the spot behind her in invitation.

“You built this?” Ben asks instead. He sounds almost impressed.

“I did,” she says proudly.

He has his hand on her Speeder now. Rey watches when the black material of his gloves comes away covered in sand and grit. Grimacing, Ben wipes it on his pants leg, leaving sandy streaks there, too. 

Rey pulls down her goggles, trying to hide the amusement on her face. “We should get going before the sun gets too high. I still think it’s a bad idea for you to be out here, but since you insist.”

Ben looks at the space meant for him and almost panics. “I’ll go alone,” he says gruffly.

“I’m not going to _bite_ you.”

“I’ll go alone,” he insists.

“And I’m telling you that you can’t.”

His brow furrows and she can feel the argument coming before he even opens his mouth. She sighs. “It has fingerprint encryption, so you _actually can’t_ drive it without me.”

Rey watches as Ben’s jaw works in frustration. Then, his lumbering form is climbing into the seat behind her. It’s still too small for them to sit comfortably: her backside is pressed almost flush against his front. Even worse is the way that Rey has to lean forward slightly, in order to steer properly. She can feel Ben tensing, trying to put as much space between them as possible. It’s a vain effort.

“It’s well-made,” he remarks off-handedly, as though to distract them both from their sudden proximity. His voice is a low rumble behind her, closer than she’s ever heard it. Her stomach twists with awareness.

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me yet,” she replies. 

Rey puts the speeder in drive and they begin cruising across the desert. She could go faster. _A lot_ faster. But Ben’s appreciation of her vehicle makes her wonder if this isn’t an opening towards a real conversation.

“Do you know a lot about machines?” she asks him. For a moment she thinks he isn’t going to answer, his gaze trained backwards on the overturned AT-AT.

“I do,” he says finally.

It was a start.

“Where did you learn?”

“...My father, for a time.”

“Was he a mechanic?”

“No. He was just obsessed with his ship.”

He doesn’t elaborate, and something about his tone tells Rey that she shouldn’t ask. She can’t help wondering what it would’ve been like, to learn from someone who was actually _passionate_ about what she did... Especially when such knowledge wasn’t gained as a means of survival. She was a problem-solver by nature and had learned much of what she did through trial and error and sheer force of will. 

The thought sobers her. She tries to imagine Ben as a child, learning about alternators and jet propulsion at his father’s knee. Did Ben’s father love him? Or did they have a contentious relationship? Was that the reason he’d ended up here to begin with? 

Rey has too many questions and not a single one of them is any of her business. She decides to keep talking about herself, instead.

“I had to learn on my own,” she supplies, when he pointedly does _not_ ask. “By computer, reading manuals… But the best way was hands-on, while scavenging or sneaking onto others ships... You wouldn’t believe how many people here have them for _decoration_. They keep them parked around the Outpost, I guess as a show of status. I used to sneak onto them all the time. I’d open things up, study them, and put them back together before anyone noticed.”

“Is that why you live in the middle of nowhere?” Ben surprises her by asking. “To study the old ships?”

She chooses her words carefully, lest she say something that causes him to shut down again. “Yes, and no. It does give me better access to scavenges. It means less travel, and less competition. But I also do it to avoid people. When you’re a girl alone on Jakku, being in the middle of nowhere is actually a lot safer than being surrounded by others. ”

“They think you’re weak...They underestimate you.”

It’s another almost-compliment. Rey clings to it. 

“They did, often.” A humorless smile stretches her lips. “They know better now. Sometimes, being alone is the best way to protect yourself.”

He doesn’t need to say anything more for Rey to know he agrees. She feels the sentiment as tangible as the warmth radiating from his body.

“I won’t ask you again how you got here,” Rey tells him, after a few silent minutes pass by. “But I don’t like stealing. I know this is Jakku and no one cares about what happens here, but it matters to _me._ ”

“I’m not a thief,” he tells her dismissively.

“No, I didn’t really think you were. Your clothes look expensive. And so does that tool on your belt.”

He reaches for it reflexively. Rey rolls her eyes behind her goggles. “I don’t _want_ it. I don’t even know what it does, and I don’t care.” 

That was partially a lie, but Ben didn’t need to know that. She’d spent much of their first day together caught between tearing the little machine open and leaving it alone. It had an insane pull on her—her fingertips had practically _burned_ with the desire to touch it. But then she would catch Ben’s sleeping, vulnerable face and be wracked with guilt.

“I just want to know what you’re doing here. I want to know I’m not getting wrapped up in something I didn’t ask for.” 

“I didn’t tell you to save me,” he spits back. It’s almost as though the thought angers him.

“Would you prefer for me to have left you out there? Because if the wounds, dehydration, and heatstroke didn’t kill you, the sinking sand fields would have. You were heading straight for them when I found you.”

He has nothing to say to that and it gratifies her.

After a beat, he snaps. “It doesn’t matter. I told you I’m not a thief, and as soon as we get to civilization I won’t be your problem.”

“Did you kill someone?”

The words hang heavy in the air. She doesn’t know why she asks it. She doesn’t know why it _matters_ because, after all, he is right: he may very well not be her problem by the day’s end. But Rey would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that there was some sort of strange _kinship_ she felt with this man. She couldn’t explain it. It was an idiotic thing, but it was there all the same and she couldn’t bear the thought of sharing it with someone who’d done something… horrible.

Ben shifts in their seat and Rey gets a sinking feeling in her gut. It was all the answer she needed.

“It’s fine,” she says swiftly, but whether it’s for his benefit or her own, she doesn’t know. “It’s like you said, you’ll be gone soon. I just… I wanted to know.” 

There’s no more conversation after that. Deciding that’s for the best, Rey tells him to cover his face with the fabric around his neck. She does the same for herself, revs up the speeder, and takes them soaring across the desert.

***

Kylo can sense others at the wreck before they even pull into view. Three of them, large and frantic, were tearing his ship apart piece by _piece._ He is flying off the speeder before the scavenger has even fully parked.

“Hey!” she shouts at him. “Ben, wait!”

Her words are lost as he tears across the sand at a full run. He rips the ridiculous goggles and fabrics off, throwing them into the air behind him. Rey shouts in protest—the items have slapped her in the chest. It’s then that he realizes she is hot on his heels, faster than he could have imagined. She is so fast that even with his head-start, she is only a few paces behind him.

Two of the creatures—bipedal and reptilian, and with scaly orange skin—have spotted him. They’d been trying in vain to drag a heavy crate filled with computer parts, but give up quickly once they spot the two humans. Now the creatures are scrambling as fast as they can down the sand dunes, screaming in some foreign tongue to another down below. 

Kylo spies the third creature, shouting with equal fervor as it revs up a transporter. Once he sees it, packed high and heavy with scavenge from _his ship,_ brutal instinct takes over. 

His arm is still sore and weak, but he reaches for his lightsaber anyway. He envisions himself bringing it to life, the volatile red of it severing reptilian heads from spine and smashing their dingy transport into dust. The image brings him dizzying relief—he is almost _giddy_ with the thought of it, letting it breathe new life into his tired and aching body. After two frustrating days of inactivity in this barren wasteland, the promise of violence is intoxicating.

“Your ship is…fair game out here!” Rey screams from just over his shoulder, breaking his thoughts. She is struggling to catch her breath. “They’re just scavengers! Like _me!_ You can’t-! _”_

“It’s my ship! _”_

“Not anymore!”

Rey’s hand flies out to grab him and he repels her with the Force. She stumbles, baffled for only a moment, then reaches out to try again. In his peripheral vision he catches sight of the staff in her hand.

Kylo whirls so fast that Rey has to skid to a stop to avoid collision. Before she can speak, he jerks the staff from her grip and shoves her to the ground. 

“ _HEY!”_ she screeches indignantly. 

He feels like a playground bully, stealing someone else’s favorite toy. The sight of her dropping unceremoniously to the ground cuts through the blood-haze. Wildly, he fights the urge to _laugh_. She would kill him afterwards, he's sure of it. 

He almost looks forward to it.

Kylo gains ground fast on the reptilians. They’re descending the dune on four limbs now, and one has already reached the transport. The last one is slower, older, and can’t keep up.

Kylo catches the creature on the neck with a savage _crack._ Rey’s staff is well-made and bears the impact without so much as a bend. The creature screeches and retaliates with a clawed hand. It misses, swipes at empty air, and Kylo lands another blow to it’s abdomen. He hits it again and again, so overpowered by his own _rage_ that he doesn’t even sense the second creature coming until it’s too late. 

The heavy swing of a tail slams into his side, knocking the air out of him and sending him sprawling. The scavenger’s staff slips from his grasp. He scrambles backwards on elbows and feet, clutching what is almost certainly a fractured rib. The creature comes at him now, jaw unhinged and revealing rows and rows of sharp little teeth. Kylo reaches out to use The Force-  
  


_Crack!_

Rey’s staff swings into view, catching the creature in the jaw and sending it reeling. It scampers away towards its friend and Rey shouts at both of them in a language Kylo can’t understand. One of them responds in kind, gesturing angrily and slewing what he’s sure are obscenities. Rey replies, pointing at the ship, and the creatures’ anger recedes mildly.

Rey points the staff at the transporter, loaded with goods, and says something else. The creatures get to their feet unsteadily, still shooting daggers at Kylo, as though regretting that they didn’t get to rip his throat out.

“G _O!”_ Rey shouts. The reptilians run for it, chattering rapidly among themselves as they board their transport and speed off.

Kylo collapses onto the sand with a grunt. The rush of adrenaline that has propelled him thus far is fading fast. Not even the Force could heal his ruined pride. Bested by two lizards when his lightsaber was _right there?_ He can almost _hear_ Snoke’s cruel laughter.

Rey walks over to him and jams one end of her staff into the sand, right next to his face. “You are _unbelievable,”_ she says incredulously. “Attacking creatures you don’t know, on a planet you’ve never been to, for doing what they need to do to _survive_? I don’t know where you came from or what you’ve been doing until now, but that is _not_ the way things work around here. If you’d just let me talk to them, we could’ve negotiated a trade. They may have even left us some credits, but now...Kriff, I don’t even know what to say.” 

_Save your breath and say nothing,_ he thinks viciously.

Rey gestures at his head, his arm, his ribs. “Part of me thinks you’re asking for all of this. This isn’t some convoluted death wish, is it? Because if that’s the case, I’ll just leave you here now and be done with it.” 

Kylo squeezes his eyes shut, no longer wanting to see that deceptively-gentle face spew insults at him. He _knows_ he’s an idiot, he knows it down to his very _bones._ He’s only ever known how to fuck up one thing and then the next, never able to make the right decision when it mattered. How could even begin to explain to this nobody scavenger about the agony he perpetually lived in? How unadulterated _rage_ is the only thing he can do to bring any semblance of order to his life? 

She couldn’t understand him, not even if she wanted to.

“I hate this planet,” he grumbles instead.

“What?” Rey squats down closer to him, in order to hear him better.

“Nothing.”

“B _en.”_

“I said I hate this planet.”

Despite her earlier tirade, Rey lets out a peal of laughter. A _real_ one, so rich that it practically assaults his nervous system. He’s so exhausted, physically and mentally, that he lets her laughter wash over him like a cool stream of water. He opens his eyes and drinks in the bemused look on her face.

She leans over a little. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“...Sure.”

“I hate this place too.”

Despite himself, Kylo snorts.

“So, you _can_ smile.”

He forces his expression back into neutrality and Rey grins. “C’mon,” she tells him. She reaches out a hand and he takes it, allowing her to pull him to his feet. “Let’s see if they actually left anything behind for us. Credits or no credits, we can still scavenge what’s left.”

***

Now that Kylo has revealed his arm is no longer broken (“I could’ve sworn it was,” Rey had mumbled), the scavenger is quick to put him to work. He doesn’t tell her that he has a fractured rib, or that his thirst is so raw that it's burning his throat. He doesn't mention his exhaustion, or the horrible tightening and dryness of his skin under the sun. Kylo doesn’t think complaining would do much, other than cement in the scavenger’s mind his complete uselessness. Irritated as he is, he doesn’t want to prove her right.

He obeys Rey’s instructions in a mental fog, not really remembering what has happened until Rey’s transport is full of parts from his old ship. As predicted, the lizard people didn’t leave a single credit behind. They had also ripped out most of the best-looking components.

Regardless, Rey proves herself to have a keen eye. She digs into the computers and panels like a seasoned expert, finding treasures in what anyone else would consider garbage. When they’re nearly done, Rey proudly proclaims that they’re going to eat well tonight.

The words pass Kylo with little weight. He doesn’t remember the last time he ate and he doesn’t much care. 

“You don’t look good,” Rey tells him then, as he loads the last of a heavy computer monitor onto the Speeder. “Here, sit down for a minute.”

He is slow to react, and so drained that he doesn’t even flinch when Rey grabs him by the arm like he's an errant child. She drags him towards the Speeder and makes him sit in the minuscule patch of shade that it provides.

Rey removes his hood and scarf, retrieved after his mad dash across the desert. She also had to reapply bandages to his head wound, since he’d ripped them off, too.

She peels it back now, checks that there is no bleeding, and puts it back in place. “You’re most likely dehydrated,” she tells him. Her eyes flicker to his mouth and he licks his lips instinctively. They are dry and cracked. He can’t imagine how pathetic he must look to her.

Rey rummages in her bag and pulls out a small canteen of water.

“Here.” She hands it to him. “Try not to drink too fast. Small sips, or you’ll vomit.”

He tries to do it, at first. But the water—even warm, and with a weird metallic taste—feels like salvation and he gulps it down greedily. Rey rolls her eyes, but doesn’t stop him. It’s only when she’s putting away the empty container that Kylo realizes he didn’t leave a single drop for her. Shame crawls through his skin, and he can’t even muster the decency to apologize. 

If Rey minds his selfishness, she doesn’t act like it. She puts a hand on his shoulder, using him as a brace as she rises. She stretches her lithe body— the joints in her knees popping audibly—and moves to the other side of the Speeder. He tracks her movements in his peripheral vision as she goes. Then, he hears her fingers fly across the ropes and nets, securing the last of their haul. 

Kylo closes his eyes and focuses on the sounds of her footsteps in the sand, her gloves scraping metal, her even breathing. In this lawless land of bandits and poverty, Rey is something like an oasis. She is steadfast and strong, her spirit unbroken by the harsh reality of this place. She is inexplicably _good_ and for the life of him he can’t understand how or why _._ He aches for even a sliver of her tranquility, her _light_. 

“By the way,” Rey says. “I found this in the wreck. I was going to leave it behind but… I don’t know. I thought it might mean something to you.”

Rey approaches him, with the mask of Kylo Ren proffered in one hand.

He is face to face with it, the relic of who he longed to be for so many years of his life. It’s dusty, but otherwise unscathed. Somehow, that fact alone irritates him. The mask is intact, but Kylo feels more broken than he ever has.

“It’s garbage,” he says dismissively. 

The scavenger scrunches her nose at him. “I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care. Toss it.”

“But it matches your whole-,“ she gestures at his clothing, “...theme _._ ”

“My _theme_?”

Kylo looks up at her, feels as though he is really seeing her for the first time. An unbidden smile finds his lips. “So I should keep it because it matches my outfit?”

Rey huffs. “Or don’t, I don’t care. I was just trying to be helpful.” 

She’s embarrassed, he realizes, and that amuses him more than it should. 

“I didn’t know you were so into fashion,” he goads. The words don’t feel like his own. They feel as though they belong to someone else, dragged out of him from another place, another time. 

Rey gives him a withering look. “And _I_ didn’t know you were such a comedian. Looks like we’re both keeping secrets from each other.”

Kylo feels that unbidden smile tug at his lips again. Rey turns abruptly and hops up onto her Speeder. “Are you up for the trip to Niima, or should I drop you off back home to rest?”

Home. That was a strange thing to call the overturned war relic she inhabited. He remembers the doll, the dried flower, and the thousands of scratched lines inside the walls.

Kylo is too curious about her. It isn’t good for him, and it certainly isn’t good for _Rey._

Still...

“I’ll go with you.”


	4. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Ben attempt to part ways at Niima Outpost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you're all well. I learned to make a moodboard so that's exciting. (It's SUPER CROOKED so I'm sorry if that bothers you as much as it bothers me...)
> 
> I also have a [playlist here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0BtuaSmQMsRg6Z9btlXVVV?si=__Tg249US9GxH-BK40suKg) for those of you who are into that kind of thing.
> 
> As always, thanks for the kudos and kind words. They feed my cold little heart.

Niima Outpost is about as impressive as Kylo could have imagined. 

When Rey sees whatever expression must be on his face, she fights a smile. “Is this not up to your standards?”

“This shouldn’t be _anyone’s_ standard.”

She parks her Speeder and descends, Kylo following. When he does, he’s surprised to find his limbs weaker than he’d like. His vision tunnels and he shakes his head a little. It seems as though exhaustion is finally catching up with him.

“I’d love to know where you come from,” Rey muses aloud. “Don’t tell me, you had droids to do all of your cooking and cleaning? A big, fancy home in the Hosnian system?”

Kylo wordlessly ignores the comment, unnerved by her intuition. “Where’s this trader you work with?” he asks. 

“I think it’s best you leave me to deal with him. You’re kind of…” she gestures at all of him, leaving Kylo to wonder what part of him is unsatisfactory for this Plutt character.

“After I trade this, I’m going to see if I can barter for a bacta patch for that wound. In the meantime, you can go look for some clothes.”

Kylo still bristles at how comfortable she is with telling him what to do. He wonders if she’s this at ease with everyone, or if he’s just special. He reflects on all of the ways she has seen him, beaten, bruised, and broken _._

He’s hardly given her cause to fear him. He wouldn’t be surprised if his physical injuries have fostered in her this false sense of _familiarity_ with him. If he was planning on spending any more time here, he’d do well to correct it.

Kylo’s gaze wanders the derelict settlement, the depressed merchants selling ugly wares to ugly scavengers. “I’d rather look for a ship than waste time on goods I won’t need.” He says the words without thinking, and when he turns back to Rey, her expression is inscrutable.

“Right,” she says. An amiable smile is on her face, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. He gets the feeling that he’s said something wrong, even though he’s nearly certain that he hasn’t.

“Well, we don’t exactly have enough for a ship. But, you’re big and strong. Or you will be, after some food and rest. You could probably trade labor for travel with one of the merchants that come in. After that, I guess you can figure out your way home.”

 _Home_. There was that word again. It echoes bleakly in his head. He didn’t have anymore of a home on Starkiller Base than Rey did in her overturned war relic. 

His thoughts feel muddled and messy and he can’t sort them out. Since when was he so sentimental? It had barely been more than twenty-four hours since he’d crashed on this nightmarish planet, and already he finds himself warped by it. He’s ruminating on things he usually wouldn’t spare a second thought, saying things he wouldn’t and generally _not_ being Kylo Ren. 

It’s aggravating. Almost as aggravating as the way he has to keep fighting his vision from tunneling.

The girl looks up at him now, squinting in the midday sun. Her eyes catch something on his face, and her own flickers with concern. He doesn’t give her the chance to comment. She’s already proven too adept at reading his moods, so he quickly changes the subject.

“I’ll pay you,” he says. “Once I’m settled I’ll send credits.“

Rey waves him off. She moves away and begins packing her bag with scavenged parts.

“And I’ll find lodging here.”

“The rentals here are _garbage_ , trust me. Also, I didn’t help you out because I wanted you to pay me. I’m not so desperate that I’d take advantage of someone else’s misfortune.”

Frustration is suddenly fighting its way out of him. It claws against his ribs like a rabid creature, hot and wild and he bridges the space between them in two long strides.

Rey blinks in surprise at his proximity, but to her credit, does not move.

Kylo’s words lurch out of him, clipped and angry. “Why are you still going out of your way to help me?”

She looks as though she’s been exposed. He watches her eyes as they bounce between his own, struggling with what to say. Her lips part as she sucks in an uneasy breath.

“Because you needed it?” she says, and it sounds more like a question than an answer.

“I’ve barely seen you eat the past two days. You’ve been giving me everything, haven’t you?”

The girl didn’t think that he’d noticed. He sees it in the panicked dilation of her pupils, the tightened grip on her staff. 

When he speaks again, he sounds more desperate than he’d like. “Why go out of your way for me when you _barely_ have enough to get by?” 

“You… Kriff, you are _impossible!”_ she snaps. “Why is it so hard to believe that I don’t want anything in return?”

“Everyone wants something.” He looks her up and down and this time she does shrink from him. “Someone like you, poor as you are… How could you _not_ want something? How could you be satisfied with kindness for kindness’ sake?”

The air between them feels charged with electricity and it should be shameful how _good_ it feels to be close to her, to be _fighting_ with her. She has been so unceasingly good to him that the memory of it is enough to make his skin crawl. 

Conflict will help. 

It has to help.

“You want something from me,” he continues. “Tell me what it is, and you can drop this act.”

Abruptly, Rey’s mood shifts. The temper abades, and the look in her eyes fades from anger to _concern._

“Ben,” she says, carefully. “Where is this all coming from? What’s wrong?”

 _Everything,_ he thinks. 

“You’re tricking me, aren’t you? You’re playing me for a fool.”

“You look feverish. Are you not feeling well? You overexerted yourself back then, didn’t you? Kriff, I knew I should have left you back home-”

“ _Home?_ ” He could laugh. “You actually call that garbage a home?”

Rey flushes and looks away from him, gaze trained on the horizon. Her silence is deafening. He can’t read the expression on her face and he _hates_ how easily she can read his.

Finally, she seems to gather her thoughts. When her eyes cut back to him, they are angrier than he has ever seen. Her voice is soft, but he’d be a fool if he mistook it for weakness. 

“You might be the stupidest man I’ve ever met.”

His thoughts spiral out of focus when Rey’s arm flies out. He almost thinks she’s going to strike him, but instead her hand finds his forearm. He flinches, makes to step away, but she follows him. She keeps firm and insistent pressure on him.

Unbidden memories from yesterday push against his consciousness. Rey’s idle chatter as she worked on his wounds, thinking him asleep. The scent of her— flowery shampoo and sweat—rousing him from his intermittent rest. The gentle coaxing as she slipped tiny morsels of bread past his lips. 

Her fingers in his hair, on his skin. 

“Instead of asking why I’ve helped you,” she says, “Maybe you should ask yourself why you can’t accept it.”

He can’t answer her.

She releases his arm and he releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding. 

“Do what you’d like,” she says softly. “I’m done with this. I’m _tired._ And you know what? I may be just a scavenger, but I still have a _heart._ I’d rather be poor and miserable than be _whatever_ it is that you are. Because I can promise you, between the two of us _I’m_ not the one to be pitied. _You_ are.”

He jerks away from her. She pitied him? _Him?_

Rey heaves the heavy bag over her shoulder and stalks away.

The scavenger is abandoning him.

He should feel relieved...

Instead, Kylo fights against an unfamiliar pressure in his chest. It feels a lot like _guilt_ and _regret_ and he doesn’t know what to do with it. He rubs his own chest, willing the tightness away. He wishes he was angry. _That_ he knows how to handle. 

Nothing was wrong. This was how it should be, he tells himself. The girl will return to her life and he to his own. They’d never cross paths again and both would be all the better for it.

He only wishes the landscape would stop spinning.

He’ll go for a walk, he decides. It would help clear his head, and he’d formulate a _real_ plan for how to escape this place. He heads in the opposite direction from the girl and proceeds, pointedly ignoring the occasional stares he receives from the other scavengers. It irritates him immensely.

The girl was right. Before anything, he needed new clothes.

He stumbles towards the clothes merchant’s tent quickly, and the woman at the stall looks just as unhappy to see him as he does to see her. Her selection is awful, but his expensive, stark-black clothes aren’t made for repelling sun _or_ blending in. He would have to do away with them sooner if not later.

Kylo’s hands only tremble slightly as he picks up a brown tunic. Belatedly, he remembers that he doesn’t have any form payment. If he was Kylo Ren, he'd manipulate her without thinking. If he was Ben, he'd use his parents’ credits to pay for it. 

Ben is dead, and it dawns upon him that, at least temporarily, so is Kylo Ren. He’s completely adrift between the two personas, unsure of what to do. 

Eventually, the old woman decides for him.

“Are those gloves real?”

He looks down at his hands, as though seeing them for the first time. Were they? He didn’t even know. He’d always blindly worn what the First Order droids gave him.

“Yes,” he lies. He pulls them off and hands them to her. Wrinkly old fingers test the stretch, flip them inside out to look at the seam. Then the old woman puts one tip between her teeth and _tastes_ it.

“Good quality,” she tells him, smacking her lips. “Anything else you got for me?”

He thinks about his jacket and cloak, which Rey had folded neatly for him and left on her workbench. Unless he stole another transport, he had no hope of retrieving them.

“What about that shiny thing on your belt?”

He puts a protective hand on his lightsaber.

 _Manipulate her mind,_ a voice says. _Cut her head off._

“It’s not for sale.”

The woman huffs disappointedly. She gestures to the black shirt that he’s already wearing. “If you give me that one, I’ll give you the brown one. And I’ll take the gloves in exchange for a pair of pants that will actually let your neithers breathe… You from out of town? What are you wearing so much black for?”

He ignores her questions and pulls the sweater over his head in one swift motion. The air—usually so dry and unforgiving—feels marvelous on his heated skin.

It’s possibly one of the stranger things he’s done—traded his sweaty, used shirt for one of significantly worse quality. But as soon as he pulls the brown tunic over his head, he feels _great._

The old lady spends too long gawking at his body. She scrambles to hand him a pair of pants. Her eyes are wide and expectant.

“Do you have somewhere I can change?”

Her entire body sags with disappointment. She jerks a thumb at the makeshift tent behind her and sighs.

***

Plutt had given her _ten whole portions_ for today’s haul, to the very jealous stares of those in line behind her. Despite the damage that Ben’s ship had taken during impact, it was still newer than anything she’d ever scavenged before. Even Plutt wanted to know where she’d found such a good haul, but she wouldn’t speak a word on it.

Rey shoves them into her bag and makes her way through the crowded marketplace. She had food now, as well as a means to barter for other goods. Even so, the victory she’s supposed to feel is a hollow one. 

Her heart has been thrumming angrily ever since she left Ben. It hasn’t even been two full days with him, yet she’s come to the panicky realization that she’s grown _attached_ to him. They were strangers thrown together by circumstance, and pure misfortune based on Ben’s part. 

Even so, it was welcome to have another living companion, even if said companion was sour and moody more often than he wasn’t She wonders if, with time, Ben would have let his guard down with her. 

She imagines what he could be like, if not for whatever it was that tormented him so thoroughly.

If nothing else, caring for Ben has kept her mind occupied with something other than her lost family. She is stubborn in her belief that they will return for her, but in the meantime she is horribly, _achingly_ lonely. It doesn’t help that she feels as though Ben is just as alone in the world as she is.

She won’t dwell on that.

It was stupid to get attached to anyone, much less to a stranger who didn’t even seem to like her very much. He is stuck with her, she reminds herself. He’s had no choice except to stick around.

Ben is right. 

She had given him too much, had prioritized his well-being at the expense of her own. He could stay here, in the Outpost, and he _could_ leave Jakku by tomorrow if he was determined enough. 

Rey wasn’t needed. Somehow, that notion stings more than she thought possible.

She shakes the thought away as she heads towards the moisture farmer’s tent. She needed to accept that the sooner she returned to her old life, the better.

***

Kylo emerges from the changing tent, only half remembering where he is.

He’d dozed off in there and he can’t recall how for long. It could have only been a few seconds, or a few _hours._ All he knows is the old women had approached and rattled the thing around until he’d crawled out like an unwanted dog. It seems that, without anything to trade, he’s lost his value to her.

He walks through the market in a daze. The beige pants the woman gave him are slightly too short—they cut off above his ankles. But they’re lightweight and breathable, and make him look very much like a nobody.

 _I am nobody,_ he reminds himself. _Nobody, nobody, nobody._

Kylo walks and walks through the barren Outpost, mulling over thoughts he hasn’t considered since he first boarded that faulty ship. It has only been a few days, but it feels as though a lifetime ago. 

He thought for sure that Snoke would have reached out to him by now. After all, it was his master’s fault that he had even wound up in this predicament, purchasing black-market ships and heading off on some poorly-planned adventure in the middle of nowhere.

Kylo had been given careful instructions to disappear. Let the Resistance grow emboldened, let them turn their attention towards Hux and Pryde and the rest of the First Order military leaders. Let Leia Organa think him _dead._

Could she still sense him, through the Force? Since he’d severed their connection completely, he hadn’t been able to sense _her._

It was a cold comfort.

He pushes his sweaty hair out of his face. He’s so thirsty that his throat aches _._ Where can he find water around here? 

Where was Snoke, his mother, the scavenger? 

Did any of them matter?

 _Water,_ he reminds himself. He’ll mind-trick some poor merchant into giving him every last drop he had. 

Part of him couldn’t deny that, as of late, he’d been feeling more like Snoke’s _weapon_ than his apprentice, more a _nuisance_ than an ally. He knew how Hux and the rest spoke of him: unpredictable, temperamental, hostile… Perhaps Snoke had felt the same, had desired him out of the way until the time came to bring him back and use his power to achieve his goals.

The thought of being _used_ again infuriates him so much that he has half a mind to draw his saber and rip through this entire town and its people.

Then he remembers his scavenger, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked, as she laughed at his misfortune under the desert sun. He imagines the difficulty she’ll have lifting the no-doubt heavy water containers onto her speeder. Whether or not he stays with her, he can help her with this. It’s a small task and realistically, the least he can do. He doesn’t like the unwelcome feeling of indebtedness that he has towards her.

Where was that damn water tent?

His foot catches the corner of a display and a shabby assortment of tools tumble to the ground. The man behind the stall hollers at him, but Kylo pays him no mind. His vision keeps tilting _left_ , as though the wiring between his brain and the rest of him has been severed at some crucial juncture.

 _I’m sorry,_ Ben will say, with weak knees and zero pride. _I don’t feel well. I’m sick. I need you._

Who was he really asking? 

He thinks he’s missed the tent, because he’s out of the market now. The desert sand stretches endlessly before him. Here was where everyone parked their ships… What did the girl say? That they were _decorations?_

He could sneak onto one. It would be so easy to use the Force to pry open a door, to crawl inside of the cool relief of a metallic hull. Would he make it that far? And which _one?_ There were just so many. His vision blurs and he shakes his head, hoping it’ll rattle his brain back into place.

He looks up again and then he notices it: the Corellian light freighter, big and bulky, and unsuited for anything except… 

Was that his _father’s_ ship? 

Was that the fucking _Millenium Falcon_?

He stumbles towards it, squints hard at it. He had to be losing his mind. What was Han Solo’s ship doing in the middle of nowhere?

Kylo _laughs_. He laughs harder than he can ever remember doing. He laughs so hard that his stomach starts to hurt. When he closes his eyes, memories flood into him like a bursting dam. He sees Han Solo in the pilot’s seat, the giant Wookie co-pilot, Princess Leia behind them with Ben at her hip...

“Ben?”

The voice anchors him back to reality. He tears his eyes away from the Falcon.

Rey looks… horrified, maybe. He can’t quite tell. At the moment, it appears as though she has two heads.

Her hood is down, revealing her hair and those three infuriating little buns. His eyes track their movement as she bends over, dropping her significantly lighter bag at her feet. 

“You’re really not okay,” she tells him. It’s a statement, and not a question. He wonders how shitty he must look for her to be so sure.

Wildly, he feels relieved. He feels _seen._

The words feel wrenched out of him. “No,” he confesses, voice hoarse. “I’m not.”

“Your head!” she exclaims, rushing towards him. She presses her palm against the bandage on his head. When she pulls her hand away, it’s covered in blood. “Kriff, okay. Sit down.”

She drags him to the ground and he goes, landing clumsily into the sand. She takes his hand and presses it hard against his own head. “Keep pressure on that,” she orders him. “I’m going to bring the Speeder around. We’re taking you to a healer, whether you like it or not.”

His hand latches onto her wrist, moving without his permission. The connection between them flares to life and he feels her pain, her fear, her loneliness...

Or were those his emotions?

He can’t tell anymore.

“I’ll be right back,” Rey tells him.

His grip is tight, bruising.

“I’m not going to leave you,” she promises, her face open and sincere.

Somehow, she knows that’s what he needs to hear. 

He releases her and she takes off, running across the market like her life depends on it.


	5. Quiet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey cares for Ben.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things get a little more... _spicy _.__  
>  _  
>  _So sorry for the delay! For whatever reason I just could not stop revising this chapter. Thank you for all the kind words, they really do keep me motivated._  
> _
> 
> _  
> _I’ve come to the conclusion that this story cannot be condensed into 10 chapters, so I’m upping to a tentative count of 12 for now._  
> _
> 
> _  
> _Mood board by the lovely_[ Cody](https://bb-8.tumblr.com/)!_  
> 

  
Ben drifts in and out of consciousness, seated behind Rey on her speeder. In the beginning, he’d kept his usual, stiff distance. The farther they’d gone into their journey, the less he seemed to care. Now he was practically slumped over her, one of his arms wrapped around her midriff for stability. 

“Hey,” Rey calls, patting him on the knee. “You have to stay awake.”

The side of Ben’s head is wet with sweat and blood and it sticks uncomfortably against Rey’s neck. She feels his labored breathing against her back and wishes she could drive faster.

Their encounter with the local healer outside of Niima hadn’t been ideal. Even though the old woman knew Rey, she’d barged out of her ramshackle tent _,_ waving a blaster and screaming at them to stay away.

Rey had simply assumed the woman’s age had caught up to her, scrambling her thoughts and causing her to speak nonsense. She knew that the woman had spent many years in isolation—not unlike Rey—which prompted her to wonder if this is what she would also become, after a lifetime on Jakku.

The woman had made her and Ben stand outside in the blistering sun while she mulled over the situation, harping on Ben’s “bad energy” and idiotic scavengers.

“I bet he promised you all sorts of things. Buy you a ship and all that? Take you off this dead rock? Force around us, I thought girls these days were smarter. _Better._ You don’t want to fool around with this one.”

“What?!” Rey had felt her face flush with heat. “You…Stop that. Listen to me, I just need _supplies._ He’s sick, and I don’t know how to help him. If I could ask someone else, believe me, I _would._ ”

For Ben’s part, he hadn’t seemed all that surprised by the crone’s reaction. He hadn’t even _said_ anything to the contrary, had only slumped heavily on Rey’s speeder and peered over at them with weary eyes. When she looked back to make eye contact with her surly companion, she could practically read his thoughts.

_It’s useless. Give up._

She couldn’t. 

Rey dropped to her knees before the old woman, putting them at eye level. She took in the tired lines around the woman’s eyes, the sand-dusted skin, the missing teeth.

This was what Jakku did to people. The desert used them up and wrung them dry, until there was little else left.

“ _Please_ help me,” Rey told her, laying down her staff. “You don’t have to like him. _I_ don’t even like him. But I don’t know how ill he is and if something happens to him… I just can’t live with something like that, knowing I could have helped. You understand, don’t you? You’re a _healer._ You care about others. I’ll pay whatever you want. Just help me help him and you won’t have to see us again.”

Rey watched the old woman battle with indecision, her shaking hands pushing back dry, gray hair. The healer licked her lips and cast a furious glance over at Ben.

“You’re a silly girl,” she told Rey, quietly. “You know what he is, don’t you?”

“All I know is that he needs my help.”

The woman studied Rey for a long moment. “You know. You just won’t admit it to yourself.”

Eventually, the healer had sighed, and agreed to take six of Rey’s portions in exchange for a bacta patch. _Six._ That left Rey with one to trade for water, one to trade for more medical supplies, and just two to actually eat. It wasn’t until later, when they were already speeding across the desert, that Rey lamented not having been more forceful in her haggling. Her mind had been too busy, fretting over Ben’s health and her inability to care for him.

“Are you awake?” she asks again. She digs an elbow into his stomach and Ben grunts something that sounds like “Yes”.

Beneath freckled skin and sunburnt cheeks, Ben’s complexion had taken on a ghastly parlor. She’d practically forced a ration bar and water down his throat before they’d boarded the speeder, fearful that he would pass out.

His arm tightens around her as they round the wide berth of a sand dune. Normally, she’d go soaring over it, enjoying the brief illusion of freedom it gave her.

She pictures Ben tumbling to the ground and shivers.

“Put your other arm around me,” she orders him. He obeys listlessly. A second, heavy arm winds around her abdomen. Her neck and her lower back begin to ache with the strain of his weight on her.

“Shame you don’t have that helmet… mask, whatever it is,” Rey comments, blabbering anything she can to keep him awake. “It’d protect your head from a fall.”

He huffs.

“I kept it, you know... It’s in the AT-AT. I know you said to get rid of it but it seemed important... And if it’s really not special, well, we could always trade it for food.”

Ben stirs a little, his breath hot on her shoulder. “You have to eat,” he tells her. _Demands_ of her. It’s strange to have someone pay such attention to her wellbeing. She finds that it irritates her, but only a little.

“Don’t die on me,” Rey threatens, after a prolonged silence. “You’re too heavy and I won’t be able to bury you.”

“Leave me for the vultures,” Ben suggests. 

“There are no vultures this far out.”

“Just you?”

“Yes, Ben. Just me.”

She feels his cheek twitch against her shoulder. Then, his grip on her abdomen slackens dramatically. One of her hands flies down to squeeze his arm. “Hey, stay awake!”

“I am.”

“You’re not. You’re falling asleep. We’re almost there. Talk to me.”

He heaves a sigh. “About what?”

“I don’t know, anything.”

He’s silent for so long that Rey is almost certain he’s asleep. Then, she feels the long line of his throat swallow against her shoulder.

“How long have you lived here?”

She shrinks inwardly from the question. “Can we talk about something else?”

“No,” he says honestly. 

“Too long. That’s how long.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Since I was a child.”

“How old were you?”

“Five, or six. I’m not sure.”

There’s a moment of pause, as he mulls that over. “And before that?”

“I don’t know. I only remember Jakku.”

At that, his head lifts. “Where are your parents?”

“Away.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know, but they’ll be back.”

“Did they tell you that?”

“I just know that they will,” she says simply. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Why are you avoiding the topic?”

“You are the _last_ person in this entire solar system to accuse me of avoiding topics.”

He rests his head against her shoulder again. “I’m going to be sick.”

“No, you’re not. You’re avoiding the question.”

“Do you really want to take that gamble? Pull over.”

Rey does. Ben stumbles off the Speeder gracelessly and proceeds to heave the entire contents of his stomach into the sand. Rey watches silently, mourning the wasted ration bar she’d fed him.

Ben casts her an irritated sideways glance and she abruptly looks away, affording him this private moment of weakness. 

***

Rey manages to get Ben to remove his shirt before he all but collapses onto his cot. He moves to tip over sideways and lie down, but Rey stops him with a hand on his chest.

She’s had glimpses of his abdomen before, but this is the first time she’s seen his torso completely bare. He’s big in a way she’s never considered a man _could_ be. Broad shoulders, firm pectorals, arms so large that she doesn’t think she could wrap her hands around the entire width of his biceps. 

The arm she’d thought to be broken is blooming with purple bruises that make her wince. One side of his ribcage is also horribly bruised, mottled in growing shades of blue. She follows the bruising down to the waist of his pants, the soft trail of hair… then her gaze snaps upwards once more.

“Don’t,” she tells him, drawing her hand away from him. She clenches it into a fist. “I have to take care of that wound. Don’t lie down.”

Before he can disobey, Rey empties the contents of her bag and grabs what she needs. She directs Ben to lean forward and she pours water over the wound on his head. Focusing on the task stills her nerves, and she cleans him up as best as she can. 

She knew the wound was deep, slicing through several layers of epidermis. Perhaps it had only been wishful thinking on her part that she could keep it from reopening, with her basic medical supplies and self-taught skills. It didn’t help that Ben hadn’t given himself a chance to recover, and she doesn’t doubt that he was also suffering from a concussion. 

As soon as she finishes applying the bacta patch, Ben slumps back into the cot. 

Rey sighs. She’d wanted him to at least down a piece of portion bread before sleeping, but it looked as though that wasn’t happening.

She walks back towards his head and takes in the tired lines around his eyes and mouth. Rey doesn’t know how old he is, but she doesn’t doubt that suffering—self-inflicted or otherwise—was aging him further.

Rey pushes his hair away and fingers the edges of the bacta patch. She should stop fiddling with it, but there’s something reassuring about reminding herself of its presence. She has no doubt that she will be prodding at the thing at regular intervals throughout the night. 

“You shouldn’t have come back.”

She startles. Ben’s eyes are still closed, and he is so pale that his under eyes have taken on a bluish hue. The pity that unfurls in her stomach is overwhelming.

“Why? Because you were a jerk?”

“It would have been better for you,” he says simply, and he’s right. She is thankful that Ben’s eyes are still shut, that he is likely seconds away from sleep. She doesn’t know how she’d say what she wants to, otherwise.

“I wasn’t planning to,” she confesses, stifling the guilt that rises up. “I was heading towards the moisture farmer’s tent. Then I saw you, standing out there in the middle of nowhere… And I just started moving. I suppose I had a funny suspicion you still needed me.”

“I do,” he admits quietly. 

Then he well and truly falls asleep, leaving Rey alone to weigh the gravity of those words.

***

Ben wakes in the late evening, agitated and breathing heavily. Rey abandons her dinner and rushes over to him. 

“Relax,” she says, putting a hand on his forehead. He is _burning_ with fever. She compels him to drink some water and he does, asking for two more refills afterwards.

“Thank you.”

Before Rey even has the time to process this first expression of gratitude, he’s asleep once more. 

***

The first few days are the hardest.

Ben is irritable and foul-mouthed, burning with fever and unable to relax. Rey finds herself looking _forward_ to her daily scavenges, if only to take reprieve of him. 

When she returns, Ben is quiet and sullen, waiting patiently for her to prepare their dinner of portion bread and dried meat. He drinks water by the gallons, forcing Rey on longer scavenges and sooner trips back to the outpost.

He won’t let her skip meals. Her addled emotions want to confuse it for _concern_ , but her head knows better.

“The patch isn’t working,” Ben complains one evening. “The woman must have sold you a fake.”

Rey rolls her eyes. “Give it time to work.”

Ben huffs and says nothing. He rises on shaky legs and sits outside in the sand, trying in vain to meditate his discomfort away. 

As Rey goes about readying for sleep, she sneaks the occasional peek at Ben’s form. His posture is perfect, and his broad shoulders stretch his shirt taught across his back. His dark hair, once lustrous and thick, falls lank against his scalp. 

She wonders if he has ever fallen so _low._ He doesn’t seem accustomed to being dependent and weak. She realizes then that she doesn’t know any other version of him. 

What was he like, healthy and confident? Was he just as insufferable?

As twilight darkens the skies over Jakku, Rey finally goes outside to retrieve him. It’s only when he jolts at her footsteps that she realizes he’s been sleeping.

“Is that normally how mediation works?”

His eye twitches under the baleful look he gives her. “You should try it sometime. It’ll give your brain a break from coming up with all those witty comebacks.”

“ _Very_ funny,” she replies. “Are you coming inside, or should I assume you’re offering yourself up to R’iia?” 

Ben grumbles something about being interrupted but leads the way inside of the AT-AT. Rey could laugh. Even in this state, he is still so proud.

***

Ben is a fitful sleeper, not unlike herself, and she has no way to gauge whether this is normal for him or not.

He never sleeps for more than a few hours at a time, and even then he twists and turns, groaning as though in pain. 

On one of his worst days, Ben’s large hand fists into the edge of her shirt. He gives it a firm tug and drags her back to the edge of his cot, forcing her to sit with him. He’d been inconsolable for most of the day, waking from nightmares she didn’t know how to soothe. He would groan and heave, refusing water and any attempts to clean him. 

Ben simply holds onto her shirt, gripping so tightly that she can hear the seams of the fabric splitting apart. It was as though he’d sensed his ending near and didn’t want to be alone for it.

She sits there awkwardly, twisting her hands together and at a loss for what to do. Was the fever due to his wound? Was she too late in staving off infection? What could she even _do_?

He aches for contact. It’s something Rey notices almost immediately. He won’t admit it, and it’s possible he doesn’t even realize it himself. But Rey sees it in his most vulnerable moments, the way he clutches for the sheet or his cloak or _her,_ trying in vain to pull any of them close. He is touch-starved in the way a neglected child is, constantly seeking safety and reassurance. To see a grown man behave in such a way is both painful and… familiar.

She could comfort him, she supposes. She tries to imagine what she’d have wanted a mother to do, when she was ill and lonely in childhood.

Rey reaches out and, having never touched _anyone_ this way, is suddenly very unsure of what to do. 

She begins by brushing his long hair out of his face. It dangles listlessly between her fingers, sweaty, unwashed, and caked in blood. She grabs a wet cloth and tries to clean as much of it as she can. When she’s finished, she smooths her palm over the edge of his hairline, flattening the flyaways and checking his temperature. 

Ben sighs deeply, and she takes that as a good sign.

“You’re going to be alright,” Rey announces, only half-believing her own words. “That patch will take care of the infection and close up the wound. You’ll be ready to terrorize innocents in no time.”

Rey sits by him until his breathing evens out, and even a little longer after. Before she realizes it, the sun has gone down, and Ben is snoring softly beneath her gentle touch.

***

The following days pass in a blur.

Rey wakes earlier than usual, to scavenge before dawn. She spends the hottest parts of the day caring for Ben, and the early evening scavenging again. She returns to the AT-AT each night more exhausted than she thought possible. 

It’s nearly a week later when Rey wakes and finds Ben staring at her from across her home, his eyes bright in the pre-dawn light.

“Are you alright?” she asks immediately, stumbling out of her hammock. “Do you want water?”

He says yes and she fills a canteen before bringing it back to him. Gingerly, he rises to a seated position. He downs the entire container in three long pulls.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better.” His voice is hoarse with disuse. “How long has it been?”

“A couple days.” Rey glances at the wall behind him, at the marks she has been scratching there since she was a child. “Six,” she amends.

He follows her gaze to the wall behind him. Mercifully, he says nothing. He turns back to her and returns the container. Their fingers brush.

This small contact shouldn’t affect her. After all, she has been touching and wiping down his sweaty body repeatedly over the past few days. She’d even helped him outside and looked away politely as he relieved himself. 

But that was Ben, sick and half-asleep and oblivious to the world. This Ben is… different. There’s a startling clarity to his eyes, a pensive twist to his mouth. She both does and doesn’t want to know what he’s thinking.

She turns away. 

“I have to get dressed. I need to head to Niima to pick up some supplies,” she tells him. She accidentally drops her canteen on her worktable, knocking over her tools and making a mess. She curses, and mumbles to herself that she’ll clean it up later.

When she heads back to her side of the AT-AT, Ben’s eyes are still tracking her. She doesn’t know what to do with so much undisguised attention.

“I’ll only be a few hours,” she offers, upon Ben’s continued silence. He blinks at her, gawking as though she were speaking in binary. 

The air between them seems to hum to life, sparking newfound awareness in Rey’s skin. She doesn’t want to acknowledge it, or Ben’s darkened gaze, or the way her body has suddenly grown hot and clammy. 

“Ben.” Her voice comes out more forcefully. “I have to _change._ Turn away.”

Ben looks as though he’s been brought back to reality. He inhales shakily and averts his gaze, working his jaw in mild agitation. Anxious fluttering grows in the pit of Rey’s stomach as she scrambles for her clothes.

She has never changed so quickly in her life. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter we get Ben’s point of view.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo contemplates Rey's niceness, then does some Not Nice things to help her out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for being so patient. Even though this story is fully outlined, this chapter still kicked my butt! I forgot to mention, this story is (clearly) unbeta'd so if you ever catch any typos feel free to point them out to me. 
> 
> Moodboard by the lovely [Cody](http://bb-8.tumblr.com)

***

  
Awareness comes in fragments. 

Cool hands over fevered skin. Being forced upwards for a meal of portion bread or flavorless oatmeal. The scavenger makes him drink so much water he nearly vomits. Fitful sleep, preceded by Rey telling him ridiculous stories about growing up on Jakku. The people here are cruel, and her handler cruelest of him all. She doesn’t tell him these things to gain pity from him; these are the only stories she has to share.

Her accent is pleasant _._ Even when she’s ranting and raving, he hangs onto every word. Some long-buried part of him hums with pleasure at her nearness. She is so _open_ , thoughts and emotions bared to him unlike anyone he’s ever met. 

In the hours between midnight and dawn, Kylo finds that he can access her mind even further. He looks across the darkness at her resting form and cannot fight the temptation to steal a glance at her thoughts. He rises on shaky legs and moves towards her, arm outstretched, fingers inches from the crown of her head.

In Rey’s sleep, he sees her anxious childhood. It’s wrought with starvation, exhaustion, and cold, sleepless nights. He sees her practicing with her staff, when she’d only barely become a woman and already found herself prey to Jakku’s predators. He sees her as she is now, discovering herself, fingertips gliding over soft skin as she…

Kylo jolts awake. 

Reality and dreams collide and he can’t differentiate the two. He’s breathing heavily, his heart is pounding, and he jerks upwards to suck air deep into his lungs. The scavenger rushes forward and her anxiety floods the space between them, pressing down on his chest and squeezing more air from his lungs. 

Had Ben Solo ever cared this much for a stranger? He’d often been too wrapped up in his own pain to think of much else. He’d cared for his family, his friends… but what passing consideration did he give for people who had nothing to offer him?

_I’ve got you._

_What’s wrong?_

_You’ll be okay._

_Did you kill someone?_

Rey’s hazel eyes search his face, his head, his bruised torso. It’s unlike him to feel self-conscious, but he draws the blanket up higher.

If she had abandoned him, that first day in the desert, where would he have ended up? Would Snoke have sensed his turmoil and sent someone to retrieve him? Or would he have simply died out there? Memories of sand flooding his face and his mouth are almost enough to make him sick.

A hand’s gentle pressure breaks him from agitated visions. It’s a quiet affirmation that he is still here, she is still here, and all will be fine. Rey leaves to fetch him water and returns before he has the chance to miss her.

Is this what his life has come to? Mourning the loss of this girl’s proximity? Dread builds in his stomach but he downs the water greedily and thanks her before sinking back into sleep. He’ll save those questions for another time.

***

He’d taken most of his frustrations out on Rey, those first few days. He’s hateful for it. Petulant, inconsolable… she is happy to be free of him for a few hours, and that realization bothers him more than it should. It cools his temper, makes him more selective with his outbursts. He admits to himself that he no longer desires to be hated by her. 

He isn’t used to being a prisoner of his own body. He’s been unable to train, to plot—let alone care for his own basic needs. He will never be fully secure in his own helplessness, but he can’t help but acknowledge there is something oddly freeing about not being held to any sort of obligations. There are no expectations, at least not from Rey. She is content for him to walk a little every day, eat regularly, and avoid snapping at her out of frustration. 

“You can’t lose hope,” she reminds him each morning, before she sets out. 

As though it were merely that simple. As though he had any use for _hope._

He thinks her kindness will surely kill her, someday. Altruism and grandiose delusions of its value had been the downfall of civilizations for centuries. This world wasn’t built for the meek and spineless. After all, Leia Organa had spent most of her life serving the undeserving and all she had to show for it was the massive rift between herself and the Galactic Senate--one which the First Order had hungrily reaped the benefits of.

There. He’s doing it again, ruminating. It makes his head pound more than it normally does. He needs to distract himself.

His days have come to revolve around the girl’s coming and goings. When she’s gone, the space is quiet without her pacing and stories. He misses her telling him about the ships she’s scavenged, or the people she runs into at the Outpost. It’s always a relief when he finally hears the sound of her speeder approaching.

When his condition allows, he spends time picking apart her home. He explores the programs on her computer, tinkers with the mechanical parts on her work table. On one particularly miserable day, he attempts to count the lines scratched into the wall. He loses count somewhere around two hundred and thirteen.

He finds the mask of Kylo Ren on one of her shelves. It’s been cleaned to a shine and sits neatly next to the Rebellion pilot doll. 

The irony isn’t lost on him.

***

The morning his fever finally breaks, there is the quiet hum of Rey’s life force across their shared space. She’s a warm, bright pressure against his normally scattered thoughts. 

He barely knows the girl, but all he can think about is that one, naive, brusque question: _Did you kill someone?_

Dozens, hundreds, _thousands?_ How much blood stained his hands, directly or otherwise? Did it _matter?_ He was Kylo Ren: heir to the First Order, leader of the Knights of Ren, grandson of Darth Vader.

It would matter to her. Rey--the girl who held no memories but the sands of Jakku--had a stubborn moral compass and he can’t for the life of him figure it out. Perhaps she knew _something_ of depravity and desolation, growing in spite of this hostile environment. But what could she understand of his own darkness? 

He watches Rey’s sleeping face, as he so often does. Her hair is a frizzy mess and her lips are parted just enough to let saliva pool on her cheek. She was more unguarded now than he’d ever seen. He remembers the visions of her youth that had stained his mind, impossible to remove. What did she dream of, when the planets turned without her?

The temptation is too much. Kylo rises from his cot, stretching muscles that are stiff with disuse. He rises on newly steady legs and crosses towards her.

His hand hovers inches from her face. Like the muscles of his body, it takes longer than he’d like for the Force to bend to his will. It comes in feeble wisps and waves, until it finally does as he bids and pries open the guards around Rey’s mind.

She dreams on, undisturbed.

Images of an island fill his mind. Was it a memory, or a wish? Verdant fields roll around him, grass billows in the punishing wind. He tastes the salt of the sea, feels the spray of the ocean. Some part of him envies Rey for having this place, real or not. He wishes he were on that island, too. It speaks of a peace which neither of them seems to have known much of. He wonders if he can hold onto this vision, use it to soothe him to sleep the same way that she does.

He returns to his cot and lies back down. He closes his eyes, wills his body to relax, and bids that island back to the forefront of his thoughts.

The peace never comes.

***

Rey’s moods are overpowering. Her emotions bleed into the room and saturate the already stifling living space. 

Upon waking, she’d been jittery and anxious, changing clothes in record time and putting their living space to order. Then, as the pre-dawn hours wore on, she’d grown impatient and unhappy. Her frustration puts unexpected weight on his shoulders and makes him just as exhausted as her. He considers often if he should ask what’s wrong, until he remembers that it really is no concern of his. 

Why did the Force see fit to give him such access to her emotions? It makes him wonder if he was just as exposed to her as she is to him. What would she find if she looked inside his head, the same way he did?

It had occurred to him once or twice that the girl might be Force-sensitive, at least in some middling sense of the term. But Rey was too old, too _normal,_ too… No. She would have noticed it a long time ago. If not, _he_ at least would have noticed by now. He tries in vain to push the thought away, but paranoia has already taken firm hold.

The scavenger goes to prepare their first meal of the day. Kylo can practically hear the gears turning in her mind as she runs through the things he needs: food, water, wound care, hygiene. She prioritizes them and lays them neatly before herself, like a mechanic before a repair job. 

The words burst out before he can help it. “Am I some kind of project to you?”

Rey’s brow furrows, and she pauses in the middle of heating up their meal. “Excuse me?”

“Am I just something to keep you entertained?”

She rolls her eyes and turns around. “Are we _really_ doing this again?”

“You know who I am, don’t you?”

She sighs deeply and ignores him.

“Tell me the truth,” he presses, rising from the cot. He realizes quickly that he is still lightheaded, and the ground shifts beneath his feet. He drops quickly back down. “That healer looked at me as though she knew me. She recognized me. Did you go back to see her?”

“No, I didn’t. She’s an old hermit who’s spent more time alone than I have. I wouldn’t put much weight on her opinion.” Rey returns with a plate of portion bread and some unidentifiable green mush. “Why are you being so strange today?”

He works his jaw, deciding what to say. “I could ask you the same thing.”

Rey blinks, dumbfounded. “Excuse me?”

“You’ve been irritated all morning.”

“I haven’t said anything…”

“You didn’t have to.”

They stare at each other for a long moment, Kylo willing her defenses to give way. Unfortunately for him, she is stronger than she seems. For every effort he makes to push against her mind, it’s as though ramming into an iron wall. It looked as though she would only let him in when she was asleep, and had no choice in the matter.

He won’t feel guilty for it.

“I’m just a little tired,” she mumbles. When he won’t take the plate from her, she drops it in his lap. Kylo hurries to catch it before it clatters to the floor. 

“Something happened yesterday. Were you hurt?” He gives her form a quick once-over, and the girl responds by blushing to the roots of her hair and stepping back. 

Realizing his mistake, he quickly looks away.

“It’s Plutt,” she confesses at last, crossing her arms in front of her. “I was expecting more of a profit from my last haul. Something tells me that today won’t be much different.”

“Does he arbitrarily change his prices?”

Rey nods.

“Why do you put up with it?”

“Does it look like I have much choice?”

They stare at each other again, and the silence becomes uncomfortable. 

“Why do you stay here, Rey?”

Hearing her name startles her. Saying it startles _him._

“It’s none of your business,” she reminds him carefully. “Just like your reasons are none of mine.”

Kylo runs an agitated hand through his hair, frustrated with how easily she can throw his own words back at him. “Fine, don’t tell me. But you should let me come with you to Niima tomorrow. This handler of yours thinks he can bully you. Someone should show him he can’t.”

Rey sputters. “I-I’m not being _bullied,_ Ben. It’s just complicated.”

“Don’t make excuses for it. He practically has you as his slave. And since what you scavenge contributes to what we _both_ eat, this is just as much my business as it is yours.”

Rey’s anger roils off of her in waves. If her quarterstaff were nearby, he’s half-convinced she’d swing it at him. “I don’t need you to stand up for me. You can’t just _do_ whatever you want!”

“I’m _asking_ you to let me help you!” he snaps back, rising to his feet. His tray of food falls to the floor with a loud, metallic clatter. “Why did you tell me all those stories about him if you didn’t want my help?!”

“I… was just _talking,_ Ben! I don’t talk to people often, and you weren’t exactly going anywhere, so I just-”

“You just thought you’d tell me all about how he’s mistreated you since childhood and monopolized this entire area to depend on his good mood? Did you expect me not to remember any of that?”

Rey’s mouth hangs open for a second too long and she snaps it shut. “I just didn’t think you’d care this much,” she replies, belatedly. “I didn’t think it mattered.”

 _I don’t care,_ he thinks. _It doesn’t matter._

His own frustration had risen in direct response to hers and it takes him another moment of agitated deep-breathing to settle down. “I’m coming with you,” he says with finality, squatting down to pick up the remains of his food from the floor.

“Leave it, I’ll get more,” Rey offers quietly. The expression on her face is indiscernible, but her anger is ebbing away. She’s giving into his request. This power he suddenly cedes over her is gratifying in the worst possible way

Almost out of spite, Kylo shoves the entire roll of portion bread into his mouth. He tries to ignore the fact that it was partially covered in sand.

***

Under the orange glow of pre-dawn light, Rey tells him more about what to expect from Plutt.

“He’s rude,” she starts. “But he isn’t stupid. He knows more languages than I do, and he could swindle you out of your payment in each of them. And he has a whole crew of henchmen at his beck and call, all over the Outpost and beyond.” 

Ben is helping her attach a new net onto the side of her speeder, the other having fallen apart during a particularly disastrous trip she has yet to tell him about. For everything the scavenger tells him, it bothers him more how much she _doesn’t_.

“Are you telling me to fear him?”

“No,” she begins, but her voice cracks. She clears her throat. “He’s not _scary._ He just… I don’t know, Ben. You’ll see what I mean.”

“You grew up with this thing. You were _raised_ by it, if we can call it that—”

“If we can call it that,” she agrees.

“It isn’t strange for you to still feel intimidated by him. He still has that control over you.”

The scavenger is quiet, mulling over his words. “You’re probably right,” she acknowledges quietly.

“I never thought I’d hear those words come out of your mouth.”

Rey grimaces at him and swings onto the speeder. “Don’t get used to it.”

***

They were the first in line at Unkar Plutt’s tent. It was eerily quiet, so early in the morning. Rey explained to Ben that scavengers generally spent these early-morning hours working, rather than blistering under the heat of midday sun.

When Plutt saw the two of them together, he had the grace to at least look marginally shocked. It was, however, quickly replaced with barely concealed disgust.

“Got a boyfriend, have you?” the creature intones, brow low and unhappy.

To the girl’s credit, she bites back whatever comment she’d wanted to say. To see her look so _meek_ prickles at Kylo’s irritation.

“We’ve come trade,” Kylo tells Plutt. He takes the bag of goods from Rey’s hand and stares intently at her, willing the thought into her head.

_Leave me with him._

She receives the message, but frowns and shakes her head.

Stubborn.

Fine, then. He’ll have to be delicate about this. 

***

“ _Twenty_ portions?” The scavenger repeats, incredulously. “I still don’t know how you convinced him of that.”

“I can be very persuasive,” he replies simply.

Rey scrunches her nose at him and shakes her head. If she’d noticed something off about his _negotiations,_ she doesn’t say.

When they part ways in search of different goods, Kylo seizes the opportunity. This time, he won't waste his talents. He won’t be _delicate_ about it at all.

It’s short work manipulating the merchants into giving him what he wants. By the time he finds Rey again, he has a new bag, stuffed to the brim with blankets, clothes, food, and other goods for her home. He’d even been able to acquire a blaster—it hadn’t been for sale, or very new, but Kylo had found it suited his needs just fine. 

“You’re unbelievable,” Rey exclaims upon seeing him. “Are you _sure_ you’re not a thief? ”

 _Not technically,_ he thinks. 

“I told you, I—“

“You’re very persuasive, _right_. If I’d known you were this charming I’d have used your skills a lot sooner.”

“Let’s go,” Kylo tells her, and if Rey walks beside him more confidently, and with a brilliant grin on her face, he does his best to ignore it.

***

Rey is practically vibrating with glee when they enter the AT-AT. She pulls clothes and blankets from Kylo’s bag with undisguised joy, but it’s the _food_ that nearly moves her to tears.

“I’ve never eaten real fruit,” she tells him, as he peels back the skin of a bright red one. “Just air-dried sticks and powders.” 

He doesn’t know what to say to that. They’re sitting together in the shade outside the AT-AT, watching the sun creep down in the horizon. A pair of vultures circle nearby, no doubt hoping to pick off any leftovers.

“I was surprised to find this kind here,” he informs her. “They’re not native to this part of the galaxy.”

Rey ponders those words. “Have you travelled a lot?”

“Yes,” he says simply, and Rey doesn’t press the matter.

He slices the fruit down the middle and hands one to her. Rey sinks her teeth into it the moment it passes from his hands to hers. She swallows the rest in only a few bites. 

They sit in companionable silence as Kylo goes about peeling the skin off another. For a few, blissful moments, he’s not in pain. He’s well-rested, well-fed, and free of contemplating anything except the mind-numbing task before him.

When Rey’s hand finds his arm—the one that was once broken—he jumps.

“Oh, sorry!” she exclaims, loosening her grip. Though the bones in his arm have long been set, the area is still swollen and tender. With his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, she has a clear view of the it.

Her hand lightly traces the straight line of his radius, raising goosebumps on his flesh. Rey seems to contemplate this injury at the same time that he does, and her brow furrows slightly in an unanswered question. He removes himself from her grip abruptly and—to his amazement—she refrains from asking about it.

“Thank you” she says instead. “For helping me.”

Kylo studies her face, the shy twist of her lips, the way her gaze can’t quite meet his. He realizes that she can’t admit her own weaknesses any better than he can. What would happen to her when he left? Would she stay on Jakku for the rest of her life, prey to the elements and her cruel handler? 

They’re questions he doesn’t have a right to ask.

“It was nothing,” he says quickly, handing her another fruit. Rey devours this one, too. Red juice drips down her chin and she wipes it messily with the back of her hand.

“I didn’t know you could be so modest,” she says, licking leftover juice from her wrist. 

Kylo looks away.

Rey sighs contentedly and leans back against the AT-AT. “So, tell me. What is your plan for getting off of this rock? If there’s something I can help you with...” she trails off.

Kylo bites into the flesh of the fruit, savoring the sweet explosion of flavor. After so many days of tasteless gruel, this simple meal feels like a delicacy.

“I’m considering sticking around for a while,” he admits. “I’m waiting on instructions from my… boss,” he finishes, lamely.

Rey’s gaze fixates on him, and this new piece of information.

“But there is a ship that I’m interested in.”

“Oh. The one you were looking at last time?”

“The Corellian light freighter,” he agrees.

“That one’s _garbage,”_ Rey emphasizes. “You’re better off trying to fly my _speeder_ off this planet.”

He swallows an insane urge to laugh. 

“I’ve piloted one similar. Call me nostalgic.”

“Well, it belongs to Plutt. And I don’t think he’d be willing to part with it, no matter how persuasive you are.”

“You said you used to sneak onto those ships before, didn’t you?”

Rey jerks back up to a seated position, her spine ramrod straight. “Ben. _No._ He’ll kill you, _and_ me. Don’t tell me, you—”

“I’m taking that ship, whether you come with me or not. I’m giving you the option of exacting a very personal revenge against the owner before I do.”

He can feel the moment her convictions about thieving gives way to dark, familiar vengeance. She revels in it for a moment, long enough for Kylo to know her answer before she verbalizes it.

“Fine,” Rey groans at last. “I’ll help you steal the stupid ship.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter, Rey and Kylo plot to take the Millenium Falcon and start to learn more about each other's past.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Come yell at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/bbl8te).


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